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Check out book 4, Sahariel’s Awakening!

It’s live today!

Sahariel’s radiant skin was a beacon to all the demons in hell, so in effort to hide, he locked himself inside a coma, leaving his physical body in the care of his fellow fallen angel, Barakel. But even though they have been released from hell, his slumber continues. All of that changes when a young woman wanders into his dreamscaped sanctuary, but how did she find him?

Heather is a psychologist now residing with the angels since they rescued her from a demon attack, and she has been having nightmares about it until one night, in her dreams, a man with luminous skin saves her. She chalks it up to a dream until she discovers the man in a coma living in the back house. How could she have dreamt about someone she’s never met?

Asael’s Nature is really about unlearning all of the false messages that we are given throughout our lives. People are going to label us, whether we like it or not, and sometimes we accidentally buy into these labels, but that doesn’t make them accurate.

In my therapy practice I see this everyday. For example some people who who were punished harshly may think of themselves as bad because someone gave them the message that they were bad. Some people who were told they were dumb or not going to succeed may have believed that message and never reached their full potential.

Part of being true to ourselves and becoming who we are truly meant to be can be shedding these labels and not allowing them to define us. In this book we watch that process in the character Asael.

Do you remember who you were before the world told you who they thought you should be?

Clara from book two, Ramatel’s Vow, is the subject for today because I recently had a reader ask about her diagnosis after she fainted. This reader asked if Clara had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and she was pretty much spot on, but with PTSD the symptoms last longer than a month. In Clara’s case this was within a week of the trauma so this would be called Acute Stress Disorder. Both of these are only disorders if they disrupt your life because if you experience some kind of trauma you should have some of these symptoms. A lot of them are designed to protect you if you are in on-going danger.

Both of these disorders are made up of several clusters of symptoms. Intrusive symptoms, avoidance symptoms, and hyper-vigilance symptoms. They are often accompanied by mood symptoms like depression, guilt, and shame. Clara’s intrusive symptoms were nightmares, and thoughts related to the trauma, like thinking she was a coward or questioning her capabilities. She tried to avoid people by pushing asking Ramatel to leave, avoiding the main house, and avoiding getting back into the fight. Then she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still out to get her, even though she was in Gabriel’s compound. She also had an exaggerated startle response when Jahi surprised her.

The good news, these are treatable symptoms, and we watch her go through some of it, like the baby steps in leaving the house. But you can never go back to who you were before the trauma because you can’t un-create the neuronal connections that formed because of the trauma. Your brain remembers what happened. You can move forward though, and maybe we’ll get to see how Clara incorporates this experience into her own narrative of who she is.

For those of you who read book one, you should be familiar with the jewelry box that Jahi retrieves when she is first resurrected. Inside are the gifts she has received from client’s over the centuries that she worked as a prostitute and she used those gifts to remind herself that she was good at something.

In psychology we would call this a transitional object. A transitional object is any object that is used to provide emotional comfort, often until the person no longer needs it. The most obvious form of transitional objects is seen in children who have that one safety blanket or toy, that “wubby” that they won’t relinquish because it comforts them, but adults use transitional objects too. Examples would be keeping some of the ashes of a beloved person or pet on a chain, holding onto the dog tags of a loved one, wearing that pin someone special gave you for good luck, etc.

Have you ever used or needed a transitional object? Don’t worry, you’re hardly alone in this.

The inspiration for Ramatel, the lead male character in my second book, came from my time in the military and from seeing the many different reactions people have to war. People develop coping mechanisms that may help them during the times they need it most, like when they are experiencing the violence of combat, however it is also important to know when to let go of those coping mechanisms lest they become unhealthy.

In the case of Ramatel his vow to not be broken would have helped him considerably in his predicament in hell, but it didn’t serve him very well when he was on earth.

I see this a lot in my therapy practice. People using the same defense mechanisms that they used as a child or in a difficult situation, which were useful and functional at the time, but now serve only to cause them pain. Most of the time people assume that there is something wrong with them for acting the way they do, but if/when I can get them to take a step back and realize that their behavior really was beneficial to them at the time, they can be a little bit more compassionate to themselves. This leads to less shame, less guilt, less self-loathing, etc.

The next step is taking a leap of faith in themselves and trying to alter the behavior, which is scary if that is how you have always handled things. But once you try it, you are well on your way to healing.